Epilepsy

The seizures in epilepsy may be related to a brain injury or a family tendency, but most of the time the cause is unknown. The word "epilepsy" does not indicate anything about the cause of the person's seizures, what type they are, or how severe they are.

About half of the people who have one seizure without a clear cause will have another one, usually within 6 months. You are twice as likely to have another seizure if you have a known brain injury or other type of brain abnormality. If you do have two seizures, there's about an 80% chance that you'll have more.

If your first seizure occurred at the time of an injury or infection in the brain, you are more likely to develop epilepsy than if you had not had a seizure in that situation.

More seizures are also likely if your doctor finds abnormalities on a neurological examination; a set of tests of the functioning of your nervous system that is performed in the doctor's office.

Epilepsy can develop in any person at any age. 0.5% to 2% of people will develop epilepsy during their lifetime. People with certain conditions may be at greater risk. About 2.7 million Americans have been treated for epilepsy in the past 5 years. That's 8 or 9 out of every 1,000 people. In other words, out of 60,000 people filling a big stadium, about 500 have epilepsy.